Commentary

What 2020 Election Polls Might Indicate About Consumer Research

1. Guy Powell from ProRelevant, November 13, 2020 at 1:56 p.m.

   Hi Maarten,
   
   I like your Law of Marketing Data and Understanding.  Makes a lot of sense.
   
   Also, many of the polls are purposely slanted to sway the voters, the herd mentality.  I would think that's also a part of the challenge.

   Reply
Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, November 13, 2020 at 5:11 p.m.
I happen to believe that if the would- be respondent is immediately aware of the true purpose of the survey and has some aversion to the subject ---or is most interested in it----that this influences cooperation rates and, to a degree, the answers one receives. For example, when a TV rating panel is recruiting people to join their operation and supply information for a sustained period of time---the purpose is stated at the outset---with the "cover" claim that the information supplied will help TV programmers make better shows---- but participation is clearly a burdeon that some may opt for while others won't. My hunch is that heavy TV viewers---who like TV--- are probably more inclined to cooperate than light viewers---but to an unknown extent. As you can't account for the resulting bias simply by demographics---a fair percentage of young people happen to be heavy viewers---it's not just old folks---you live with it---so long as the results are not incorrectly skewed to favor
one network over another as far as you can tell. Or ----if no one asks about it.

I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't what's happening in the election polls. Even if they ask if the person is a likely voter, that still doesn't account for the potential bias of those favoring Biden being more likely to participate while those who are suspect of such polls either lie for privacy reasons or just to mess them up. If this happens 5-10% of the time that's more than enough to skew the findings away from reality by a distressing margin.

I'm not suggesting that this theory explains everything---it probably doesn't. But it might be interesting to see what happens if these polls disguised their true purpose starting on another subject and asking people a few non political questions at the outset---then, once they have secured cooperation, follow with the political stuff. At least that might draw more people in and, as a rule, once a person starts to cooperate with another human being in a telephone survey some bonding takes place and you have a better chance of getting honest answers.



Reply
John Grono from GAP Research, November 16, 2020 at 3:20 p.m.
Maarten, I think that there are other factors at play.

First, this is the first PPP I can recall - Pandemic Political Poll.   Access was affected which could be a contributing factor.   I suspect that the more reputable pollsters may have made allowance that others may not.

So Guy, I think the incidence of 'slanted' polls is less of an issue than 'lazy' (aka .. quick and cheap) polls.

But a huge factor is that many of these 'polls' work to an sample threshold.   That is, they "push" out the poll and the first (say) n=1,000 who respond are accepted as being 'representative'.   This 'push' tends to be SMS, email, 'phone etc.   Yep - convenience polls.   I suspect that this has an urban bias, which likely favours urban areas.   If is for reasons like this that research such as TV ratings use stratified panels (random within strata) which provide reduced bias but also longitudinal data (is it really a swing or is it chance).

But the last time I looked, the polls were predicting a Biden win, and I think January 20 will show that as correct.


Reply

CommentRead more comments >

Next story loading